Friday, April 02, 2010

I WANDERED lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but theyOut-did the sparkling waves in glee:A poet could not but be gay,In such a jocund company:I gazed—and gazed—but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.

1804.

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In honour of the arrival of spring, much belated this year but obviously welcome.

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From: The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, William Michael Rossetti, Ed. (London: Ward, Lock & Co.)

Little Reads

Little Reads

The best way to keep chemical attacks from reoccurring is to finally use measures that the UN put in place to prosecute people whom we suspect have perpetrated them, suggests a doctor who is working in Syria. He also describes the wearisome repetition of ultimately senseless questions from journalists after each chemical attack within the past five years.

I wish journalists would stop asking such questions because the world, which didn’t care about what happened then, will not care about what will happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

[...]

“What happened on the day after the massacre?” the journalist continues. There is a span of several hours that I can’t remember. It seems that my mind has tried not to remember those twelve hours. It is very painful to remember that day. So please stop asking me about it.

I first heard of Madame de Lafayette's column when President Nicolas Sarkozy lamented that her novel Princesse de Clèves was read by reluctant school pupils like his younger self.

Now a second one of de Lafayette's works has gained a political significance. La Princesse de Montpensier is entering France's literature baccalaureate programme to bring an end to a long absence of female authors.

Under this Guardian article, the readers' comments, while sometimes harsh or arbitrary, are also insightful and witty.

(But I don't feel drawn to either of Madame de Lafayette's books after reading these descriptions.)

A sober, but blunt and subliminally angry, look at the major decisions, in their style and in their substance, that the current United States government has taken since its inauguration in January.

The writer shares and illustrate the far-ranging unease with which Americans see the new (dis)order in Washington, Americans even in the political circles of which the Administration is usually a semi-symbiotic element.

Her very first lines are, to borrow the language of naval warfare, a 'shot across the bows':

Donald Trump’s substance-free approach to governing may be comfortable for him but it’s caused his presidency big problems. To take the most prominent example, the health care bill: